First (and ongoing) impression of Sundered

[MechaTails]

[Note: you can ignore everything past the first response, there's a troll trying to get the topic locked]

I played on Normal "at a friend's house" until I make some money to buy this. Beat two minibosses and explored a bunch of the map, found a handful of Perks Coins (I think of them like Power Rangers Coins lol). These are my thoughts on the game so far, uncolored by the bias I see in reviews for games in this genre. Hopefully new players will find this useful.

•Direction
There is little direction on what you're supposed to do, I assume the devs assume you know more or less how games like this work. There are a few tips that appear during loading screens, and your creepy crystal benefactor (who maybe speaks in Arabic and might be a Djinn) gives you some info, but for the most part you'll be charging ahead figuring things out as you go.

The game loop goes like this: Roam around killing monsters to collect Shards to upgrade your stats and equippable Perk Coins, find and open shortcut doors, find Boss Rooms and mess with their Treasure to trigger the fights, die horribly and get sent back to the Starting Room to upgrade your stuff, then repeat. There are bits of lore to be found, like in the descriptions for some of the more powerful stat upgrades.


•Movement
It felt "floaty" at first because movement has some momentum, which I thought would be a problem since there's so much platforming. However, I like it now because it creates a fluid sense of movement, especially when combined with the wall-jumping and lack of ledge-grabbing. The character feels like someone who is parkouring, not like a stiff artificial model that magnetizes to surfaces.


•Combat
I spent a few minutes swinging the sword around to figure out what it could do since the game doesn't tell you what attacks it has. I found enough basic attacks to make fighting enemies interesting.

While on the ground, there's a 4-hit button-mashing combo, a crouching-slash, and an upward stab. You can also do a flip, with nice range, to dodge attacks. I haven't found a use for the crouching slash yet, but I imagine it's to let us keep attacking while crouching under a laser beam or something. Usually I'm too busy flipping the hell out of the way to dodge the horde of charging electric squid monsters. Try to keep enemies to one side of you, that way you hit them all with each swing and you don't have to dodge as much.

While in the air, you have a downward ram-spike attack, sideways slashing, and an upward swing that gives you a little extra height. That upward swing is important because it makes moving around the map easier (and lets you reach hidden Corrupted Treasures). There's no ledge-grabbing, so oftentime you need to jump and swing upward to reach a ledge above you. However, the maps are designed in a way that, for the most part, you can traverse the map fluidly.

As soon as you can, get used to jump, up-swing, wall-jump, jump, up-swing, wall-jump etc. This lets you reach lots of areas, and with practice you can even go up a single wall.

Attacking things in mid air has a Shinobi-like effect where if you hit something you can usually keep attacking a few more times without dropping to the ground. You'll see it's useful for staying off the ground by smacking Meteoroids, reaching Treasures, etc.

You can't Dodge in mid-air (until later), and while I dont think it's vital to have this, it can be problematic when being attacked by a bunch of those super-accurate lasers or Meteoroids.

You have an Energy Shield that depletes and recharges after a while. This thing is invaluable. I think it's kinda weird that's it's an energy shield and not a physical shield, but then again the techno-infused desert oasis setting is weird lol.

Enemies spawn continuously and in different/stronger variations, a la Risk of Rain. Stay and fight the amassing hordes or run away. You'll quickly find running away isn't always the best choice because flying enemies will still hound you, ground enemies sometimes keep chasing you, and the Laser Turrets can shoot through the entire map! Battle get extremely hectic and it's all part of the fun. I can't imagine what Insane difficulty must be like. It's probably just all Lasers and inconvenient Thorn Bushes lol.

Anyway, the game is beautiful and I imagine the underlying story is too, if I ever figure it out.

Oh yeah, and the protagonist is a chick, so, you know, deal with it :P

=============

Update

The trickle of info the game reveals pays off in that it creates an emotional dilema for the character (and the player if they're paying attention lol).

I wasn't too sure what the creepy maybe-an-evil-genie-crystal meant when he urged me to "corrupt my powers". I gave it some thought as I headed for the nearest purple icon. I was hesitating thinking of what it would mean, maybe I just get better abilities, or maybe I unwittingly make some unholy deal with an eldritch entity and damn my soul forever. I went ahead and corrupted my Leaping Device and...well, maybe I'm just vain but I regret it and now I have to live with the transformation buhuhuhu. I wonder if I have to wax these things regularly?

Go with your gut when deciding to Corrupt or Resist!

[Boink]

Originally posted by MechaTails:

I guess now you're just trying to get the topic locked with nonsense. Eh, can't blame you for trying, it's the internet after all.

Also "triggered" is a common word in American slang, so still not sure what you're talking about. Oops, sorry about the quotation marks again!

(I'm not sorry)

Hey, I found some sweet plastic figurines, but I cba to buy them, so what I do is: Setup a paypal, order a load, recieve them, then charge-back the Paypal account. I mean, once I've used them for a couple of months I *might* send the guy his money, but yeah, I generally don't.

p.s.

Ordering plastic figurines now. I like the look of this Starshine one. Some dude is quoting me $100 for it, so I'll send $50 via Paypal, recieve it, then cancel the payment.

I mean, he'll be "triggered", but "not sorry".

~

Getting the point yet?

[Knifight]

[quote=Boink;1471966894884144866


So here's what you do:

#1 Buy the game

#2 Leave a positive review with all of your amazing feedback in.


That's how this works. [/quote]

I think that prettymuch sums it up. He just wants to get a rise out of people and when he doesn't he'll just act like he did anyway. Who knows what makes a person act like that. Whatever it is, he'll keep mistaking people feeling bad for him and suggesting he not steal or even just not brag about stealing on a forum run by the people he stole from for having successfuly upset somebody. He just knows that if he keeps acting obnoxiously enough on the internet that somebody will respond eventually. Best thing to do is leave him to his life of writing reviews no one reads of things he stole on the internet. I can't think of anything that could be said to him that's darker than that already is.

[Boink]

Originally posted by Knifight:

I think that prettymuch sums it up. He just wants to get a rise out of people and when he doesn't he'll just act like he did anyway. Who knows what makes a person act like that. Whatever it is, he'll keep mistaking people feeling bad for him and suggesting he not steal or even just not brag about stealing on a forum run by the people he stole from for having successfuly upset somebody. He just knows that if he keeps acting obnoxiously enough on the internet that somebody will respond eventually. Best thing to do is leave him to his life of writing reviews no one reads of things he stole on the internet. I can't think of anything that could be said to him that's darker than that already is.

My review of the game prior to this thread was happily sitting at 85% helpful.

Guess what?

Someone got his little friends to mass downvote it.

They're childish, a lot of them are involved with some really nasty Reddit Alt-Right Trump / racists and they think that they're a lot cleverer than they really are.

*shrug*

p.s.

Yes, I can point to a Steam Global Moderator who posts such things on Reddit - it's not exactly a policed community, and he loves global bans if you know what I mean.